Tweet, eat and chill #Hashtag
Trendy restaurant centres around your digital device
DURBAN’S social media fans came out to play in what must have felt like home at the launch of the city’s new #Hashtag Social Restaurant and Cocktail Bar on Thursday night.
The restaurant is the latest incarnation of a trendy address in the hipster-centric Florida Road and Windermere district.
In its recent past lives it has been the popular Hai.bo café and, before that, the Bean Bag Bohemia restaurant.
On #Hashtag’s first official night (it quietly set up for business two weeks ago), it opened its door to a miscellany of Durban media and socialites.
The beer and cocktails flowed freely as employee Alleyne Morton wooed those attending with tales of infinitely instagrammable gourmet delights and fancy drinks to come.
“We have a saying here and it’s ‘tweet it before you eat it’,” he said to the gathered natives of the digital sphere.
The eatery was created around the concept of integrating the digital and real lives of its patrons — diners were encouraged to “check in” on social media every time they visited it.
There were also hints that there would be free goodies and that online posts would be shown on the venue’s large screen TVs and projected on its wall.
Absolut Vodka brand ambassador Kresan Naidu stood out in his textbook hipster duds — although I confess to being most impressed by his beautifully groomed moustache.
Restaurant head chef Renaldo Abraham took the microphone from Morton to speak about the “build your own burger” (or pizza, or pasta) idea, according to which diners can choose what goes into their meal.
After Abraham’s short speech, we were invited to tuck into pizza served on wooden chopping boards and, following that, mini (medium-sized, really) ostrich or chicken burgers.
The ostrich did not go down well with some people, but the food was generally good. When I left just after 8pm, the restaurant’s guests had settled down and many had switched off from their surroundings. They were all focused on the smartphones in their hands.